


Credit Where It's Due

by Badwolf36



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-06
Updated: 2014-01-06
Packaged: 2018-01-07 16:52:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,787
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1122235
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Badwolf36/pseuds/Badwolf36
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Coach Finstock is a bit more perceptive than people give him credit for, and Stiles gets some support from an unexpected corner.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Credit Where It's Due

**Title:** Credit Where It's Due  
 **Fandom:** Teen Wolf  
 **Author:** Badwolf36  
 **Rating:** PG  
 **Characters:** Coach Bobby Finstock and Stiles Stilinski  
 **Word count:** 1,716  
 **Disclaimer:** I do not own Teen Wolf or any related properties.  
 **Warnings:** Set sometime in between 3A and 3B.  
 **Summary:** In which Bobby is a bit more perceptive than people give him credit for, and Stiles gets some support from an unexpected corner.

 

Nobody has ever accused Coach Bobby Finstock of being overly perceptive.

His main focuses in life are lacrosse, cross country, economics, and keeping high school students (mainly Greenburg) from driving him around the bend before he turns 50.

So it’s perhaps a shock more to him than anyone else when he notices that there’s something up with Unpronounceable First Name “Stiles” Stilinski.

Actually, there’s something up with a lot of his students, but it’s more obvious with Stilinski, who had gone from a manic little psycho who wrote him essays on 19th century politics instead of simply answering the question about supply and demand (although the kid had wiggled in the right answer in that mess of word vomit) to a pale, hollow-eyed little psycho who stole his whistle and flinched every time a branch tapped Bobby’s classroom window.

The kid was insanely good at cross country all of a sudden, too, and Bobby had high hopes for another lacrosse championship. Bobby chalks it up to him practicing with McCall and Lahey, but there’s an anxious tenor to the kid’s gait, like he’s running toward (or away) from something like his life depends on it.

But the thing that tips it for him one day is when the bell rings and there’s a rush of teenagers stampeding out the door, followed by a cloud of body spray and the odor of desperation.

He’s looking over his last notes for the day, taking his time since he isn’t so masochistic to schedule practice on a Friday afternoon and not so suicidal that he wants to try to get out of the parking lot when all those little assholes are ripping out of it. It isn’t until he hears a frustrated huff that he looks up and realizes that Stilinski is still crammed into his desk. The kid has his left hand fisted in his short brown hair and he’s scrunched over a notebook that he’s frantically scribbling into with the pencil in his right hand.

“Test is next week, Stilinski,” he says loudly, turning back to his own papers and shuffling a pile of them together. “Now get out of my classroom and go do whatever it is you teenagers do. And don’t tell me about it, because I truly don’t want to know.”

But there’s no sounds of a desk being bailed out of by a gangly-limbed teenager. No hurried, “Thanks, Coach.” And when he looks up, Bobby realizes there’s no sign the kid even heard him.

“Stilinski!”

The kid hunches forward, scribbling increasing in intensity as his lips start moving.

Bobby wonders briefly if he should grab Marin Morrell for this. That’s what guidance counselors did, right? Deal with things like high school students who were starting to lose it?

But Stilinski was one of his, a star of last season’s lacrosse championship (and hadn’t Jackson Whittemore’s supposed death put a sock in that well-deserved gloat?), and Bobby liked to think that he was a pretty damn good coach and mentor to his players. (There may be a Vince Lombardi-style hat at the top of his closet that he takes out when he wants to practice his inspirational speeches in front of the mirror and look devastatingly raking while doing so, but that was neither here nor there.)

He pushes back from his desk and crosses around the end of it. A few steps bring him down the aisle between two rows of desks until he’s standing next to Stilinski’s desk on the side the students get into the uncomfortable contraptions.

The heading on the notebook page Stilinski is working away on is “PLAN B.” Next to the “B” is a comma, then a “C,” then another comma, then a “D,” another comma, then an “E” and so forth, the rest of the alphabet curling down the right margin.

The rest of the page is filled with scribbled-out text, crossed-out words and sentences, small sketches of what looked like a catapult and symbols that Bobby was vaguely certain had been tattooed on that really hot chick he had tried (and failed) to pick up at the Renaissance Fair.

As Bobby watches, Stilinski huffs again and draws a thick line through a sentence that reads, “Utilize the Nemeton’s power to eliminate threats…how do we tell it what’s a threat? Would it attack Derek if he came back?”

Muttering now comprehensible that Bobby was closer, he hears Stilinski say, “Okay, plan double-A. You’re the plan guy, Stiles. Good plans. Solid plans. They need you to be the plan man. Plan things that won’t get us all killed. Oh god…”

“Stilinski!” Bobby yells.

At this, the kid finally acknowledges him by recoiling so hard that he shoves the desk three inches to the side.

“Oh, uh, hey there, Coach. You’re standing super close there.” The kid glances around. “And…there’s nobody here. Pretty sure this is the start of a terrible dream.”

Bobby rolls his eyes and crosses his arms over his chest as he leans against the desk behind him.

“One, it creeps me out enough to know that Greenburg dreams about me, let alone you. And two, school’s over.”

“Oh, so it is,” Stilinski says after glancing at the clock on the wall. He drops his pencil on top of the notebook page and digs the knuckles of his fists into his eye sockets.

“You been sleeping okay, Stilinski? I’ve seen raccoons that had eyes less black than yours.”

Stilinski snorts and moves his hands back down, spreading his fingers over the notebook page.

“Raccoons. Right. Man, I wish I had problems with raccoons. Nice, stupid, furry raccoons.” He doesn’t really appear to be talking to Bobby, eyes instead focused on some point in the distance.

“Girl problems?” Bobby asks. Then, remembering the fiasco at the dance with McCall and Mahealani, he adds, “Boy problems?”

Stiles laughs loudly, if bitterly, at that.

“Teenager problems,” he says when he finally gets control of himself.

“Last I checked,” Bobby says, “you and the rest of your cohorts _are_ teenagers.”

And the look Stilinski gives him then, dark amber eyes far too focused for the average dumb teenager (and Bobby has seen thousands, he knows the difference) strikes Bobby the same way that his dad’s used to, when Bobby used to peer around the corner at his old man when he stayed up late at night at the kitchen table with a tumbler of bourbon and the photo album filled with pictures of his fallen war buddies.

“Yeah,” Stilinski says. When he finally breaks his gaze away from Bobby, he repeats, much more quietly, “Yeah.”

Bobby is rarely at a loss for words, but this kid, this broken, messed-up kid with his dad’s thousand-yard stare, has brought him to that point.

He works his jaw a few times, trying to work spit onto his suddenly dry tongue.  Stiles has his hands curled around the notebook now, the sheets crumpling into his fists.

“Stilinski…Stiles,” he says.

The teen (man?) is blinking rapidly when he looks back at Bobby.

“Look, I’m not good at advice,” Bobby admits. “My best lines come from movies and ‘Scarface’ probably isn’t appropriate here.”

Stiles snickers, and it’s the most genuine sound Bobby has heard from him this entire conversation.

“Life sucks,” he continues. “It’s harder for some people than others, and sometimes it is really not fair. Some people get dealt some really shitty hands. But we’re all in this together.”

Stiles tilts his head to the side.

“Did you just…did you just quote ‘High School Musical’?”

Bobby slaps the back of Stiles’ head, remembering too late the conversation he’d had with the principal about not doing that anymore.

“Pay attention,” he says in lieu of apologizing. “Disney is full of good advice. After all, who else is going to teach kids they shouldn’t trust shady old women with free apples?”

“Their parents?” Stiles volunteers after working his mouth soundlessly for a moment.

“The Mouse is wise, Stilinski. Also, you got the reference, so shut it. And you’ve knocked me off my topic, which is that you look like hell.”

“Wow, thanks.”

“I’m not finished.” Bobby leans further back against the desk next to Stiles’, crossing his arms and hooking the back of his right heel over the seat. “You look like hell and you’re obviously dealing with more than just the average teenager bullshit.”

Shock is something he’s pretty sure he’s never seen on Stiles’ face.

“I may be oblivious on occasion, kid, but I’ve been doing this for a long time. And I get that your dad has been dealing with a lot of murders lately as the sheriff and, being his son, that means all the stuff he deals with gets shoved back onto you at some point. You’re a tough guy, tougher than you get credit for. That doesn’t mean you don’t drive me up the wall,” he adds when he judges that the grin on Stiles’ face is getting too wide.

“You should talk to someone,” he continues when Stiles has mostly wiped the grin off his face. That sentence finishes the job. “Seriously. You should. Not me, though. I seriously don’t want to know.”

Stiles looks back down at his notebook, the pad of his right pointer finger tracing the alphabet down the side.

Softening his voice a bit, Bobby says, “Maybe you ought to work on being the ‘Plan A’ guy. Leave the backup plans to someone else for once.”

Stiles swallows loudly enough that Bobby can hear his throat click.

“Ye…yeah,” he says; his throat obviously dry.

“Get out of my classroom, Stilinski,” Bobby says, although at nowhere near the volume he would use on the field or in his classroom.

“You bet, Coach.” Stiles snaps the notebook shut, shoving it and his pencil in his backpack.

Bobby walks back to the front of the room, letting Stiles pull himself together before standing. He looks up when Stiles pauses in the open doorway.

“You know, Coach, you’re not the only one who doesn’t get enough credit.”

And then he’s gone. Bobby flops back down into his desk chair, glaring at the pile of ungraded papers still waiting in front of him.

A grin tugs on his face for a moment before he tamps it back down.

“Damn teenagers.”

 


End file.
